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Carlyle co-founder defends industry tax payment record

Private equity firms would “happily” comply with higher levels of taxes if governments “tell us what you want us to pay”, David Rubenstein, the billionaire co-founder and managing director of Carlyle Group, has said.

Participating in a panel discussion debating the failings and pitfalls of capitalism at the ongoing World Economic Forum summit in Davos, Rubenstein rejected the ongoing attack in the US on Republican presidential candidate and buyout peer Mitt Romney over the 14% rate of income tax he paid in 2010. Romney only paid “what he was legally required to pay”, Rubenstein argued.

The buyout titan stressed that capitalism, despite its present “problems”, must “work through” the issues of “boom and bust”, arguing the existing set-up “might be the worst form of system, apart from every other system”.

He also quipped that the debate over which model of capitalism - the more "laissez-faire" style of western capitalism, or the state capitalism embraced by the likes of China - would prove more effective would be settled only in the future.